A year ago, I sold my television because it was the size of a Hummer, which is not something you can hang on a wall. Also, the terrestrial fare it dished up was crushingly dull yet irritating. Now, I miss it. Well, I miss its mammoth distraction effect - the outwardly real-time 'go-go-go' vibe of rolling news, sports and reality TV.
Still, I'm reluctant to buy another set when I know that it, too, will inevitably annoy me, like the kind of flatmate or significant other who gets under your feet. Instead, I have begun exploring that perennial contender, Web TV, in the guise of Joost (pronounced 'juiced').
Joost is such a big deal that American media conglomerate Viacom - which owns MTV Networks, Comedy Central, Spike TV, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks - has embraced it and become a partner by licensing its television and theatrical programming to the upstart internet TV service. That development was in stark contrast with Viacom's complaints against YouTube. In March, Viacom filed a US$1 billion lawsuit against the video-sharing service and its owner, Google, alleging massive copyright infringement.
Joost owes its existence to Scandinavian entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, a pair with a pedigree. They were responsible for wildly popular peer-to-peer file-sharing system Kazaa and resilient internet telephony network Skype. Development work on Joost started last year, when it went by the codename The Venice Project - an apt title for a thriller. Telecommunications market analysts, such as James Enck from Daiwa Securities SMBC in London, see Zennstrom and Friis' latest endeavour making a similar impact to that of Kazaa and Skype. 'They introduced two of the most revolutionary - disrup-tive - products in the history of the internet, and the most viral. Possibly this is a hat-trick,' Enck has said.
Reflecting that potential, the Day-Glo bright Joost homepage greets visitors with a message so bullish it borders on the ecstatic: 'The magic of television, with the power of the internet built right in. Joost puts you in control, and TV will never be the same again.'
If you fall for the magic, you can forget about schedules. You can watch what you want, when you want and as often as you want. Better yet, Joost is free and works with most modern, broadband-connected personal computers.The rub is that the reception is sometimes poor. Spasmodically, the picture flickers and crashes. During a Joost off-moment, you may struggle to make the program quit even when you go nuclear by hitting alt-control-delete.